


The Predator : The Prey

by RandomReader13



Series: broken bodies, daisy bloom [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alfred is here because fuck you I'm not leaving him alone in the Manor, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Batfamily (DCU), Batfamily (DCU) Feels, Family Feels, Found Family, Gen, I might add more to this universe idk, Survival, This is not a walking dead au tho, Zombie Apocalypse, exploring zombie survival methods, ironically the zombie au is the one without any on-screen violence, it's pretty fun, my sister started watching The Walking Dead and this is the result, or named, rated T for the general ambiance and a tiny bit of cursing, the zombies are never actually on screen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:41:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27560188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RandomReader13/pseuds/RandomReader13
Summary: Surviving in a zombie apocalypse isn't easy. Luckily the Batfam has some experience with survival.
Series: broken bodies, daisy bloom [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2014831
Comments: 10
Kudos: 133





	The Predator : The Prey

The movements were as familiar as breathing: double-check the bore, reassemble the piece, rub with oil, set the gun to the side, pick up the next one. It was meditative, and was currently the only thing keeping Jason from ripping the head off the next person who tried to talk to him.

Double-check the bore, reassemble the piece. The pistol made a quiet thunk as he put it down, reaching behind his chair for the rifle.

Jason had never done well with confinement. Oh he could bunker down, stay silent and hidden for weeks on end, but that was by choice. And usually he didn’t have seven other people crammed into the same apartment. There was barely room to move. There wasn’t room to breathe

A quiet burst of laughter from the corner — subdued, always subdued now, Jason almost caught himself missing Dick’s bright, unrestrained laughter — and Jason ground his teeth, putting the rifle down with a louder noise. He could feel the gaze of his siblings swiveling to him, and his shoulders tensed further.

“Jay?” Dick called quietly. “You okay?”

Jason remained silent as he pointedly picked up his AK-47 and started taking it apart.

The low murmur of conversation picked up again, even quieter now, and Jason closed his eyes for a moment, fighting back an irrational surge of rage. At them, at himself for tainting their rare moment of ease, at the world in general for putting them in this situation.

A lithe figure sat down beside him and Jason barely restrained his attack instinct to a violent twitch. Cass picked up one of his spare rags and he passed her a piece of the gun. She started cleaning it, focus trained entirely on the task, and Jason’s tense muscles slowly started to unwind.

Movement outside the door and it was like an electric charge shot through the room. Jason slowly reached for his pistol, waiting for the signal.

Two quick raps, one more, seven hard thumps.

No one moved.

A shuffle, armor scraping on drywall.

Two quick raps, one more, two hard thumps.

Alfred held his shotgun tight in one hand as he unlocked the door and pulled the metal bar blocking it out of the way. Bruce and Tim spilled through the door and Alfred quickly locked it again.

Bruce and Tim immediately started stripping out of their armor. Batarangs, knives, utility belts, and guns were placed carefully in the corner. Jason studied the spare red helmet Tim tugged off his head. He had gotten used to telling blood from paint, and no matter how many modifications Tim made to the inside to make it fit his smaller head, he hadn’t changed the color. Jason relaxed imperceptibly when he couldn’t find evidence of a head wound. Those were a bitch to deal with, without the Cave’s equipment.

Steph hurried over to the pair, full armor on and scissors in gloved hand, cutting through the layers of duct tape wound around the seam between sleeve and glove, pants and boots, neck and cowl.

“Any injuries?” Dick asked, looking them over with a critical eye.

“No bloody,” Tim said, pulling his thin shirt off. Alfred, who had taken the time to pull on his own set of armored gloves, began carefully checking him over.

“Bruce, stop!” Steph cried. Everyone froze. Jason couldn’t breathe, hand white-knuckled around the grip of his gun. They had gotten lucky so far, so lucky. But the Waynes had never had the best track record with luck.

“A bite?” Damian demanded, starting forward. Jason grabbed him and dragged him backward. He didn’t even need to get up to do it, the apartment was small enough that leaning back meant he could almost reach the wall. Jason focused on Damian’s struggles instead of the way the thought made him taste grave dirt and worms.

“No,” Steph said, and they all sagged a little in relief. “Just gore.”

Bruce gently maneuvered away, back towards the door, and Damian flailed his free arm, hitting Jason so hard in the gut he wheezed. “Father!”

“It’s okay, Damian,” Bruce said, still half in his armor. “I’m just going to the other apartment. Stephanie is going to come with me.”

Steph nodded firmly. She had taken on the role of assistant medic, her years of training with Leslie making her quick and steady in a crisis. Damian twisted, trying to get out of Jason’s grip, so Jason yanked him down and wrapped his arms tightly around him.

“You better come back, old man,” he said warningly.

Bruce looked over all of their faces before nodding and slipping out the door.

A deadly silence fell over the group as Dick slid the locks back into place. The only thing that broke the hush was Alfred directing Tim to the bedroom for some privacy to examine his lower half for wounds or gore. It was a lot less likely than upper body wounds, so they could risk Alfred being alone with Tim to check.

Damian had stopped struggling, but Jason didn’t let him go. He rested his chin on the boy’s fluffy hair, staring fixedly at the door. Cass went back to cleaning the guns, and Jason focused on the click of the pieces, the squeak of the oiled cloth.

The other apartment was shabby and worn, but it had maintained its structural integrity so far. In the second week, after it became clear they weren’t going anywhere any time soon, Bruce, Jason, and Dick had hauled a long fire hose through a bottom window and up to the second floor. They had had to cut a small hole in the floor, off in the corner, to feed it through, and a few more dotted around for drains, but they had managed to secure the hose.

They had used that hose every time they left the apartment, at first, before and after they took off their armor. It blasted like a power washer, nearly abrading the skin off any uncovered area. But it made sure there was no gore on them or their armor. They had switched to a necessary-only method after Tim got sick from the constant cold and wet, quickly followed by Damian and Dick. Jason had needed to take Alfred and retreat to a back-up apartment until it passed. That had been a bad week, and there was a solid three days at the end, when even Cass had fallen ill and Steph and Bruce had coughs, that Jason thought he and Alfred might end up the only ones left, unable to hold their loved ones’ hands as they passed, not even able to return to give them a proper burial or say goodbye.

They couldn’t risk getting sick, so they only used the hose on a person when they had gore on them. Otherwise, they stripped the armor before either hitting it with the hose or Jason’s flamethrower.

Cass had finished the guns and Tim had been given the all-clear by the time the knock came.

Two quick raps, one more, six hard thumps.

Jason and Damian stiffened as one, backs ramrod straight as they waited. Was Steph coming back alone, leaving Bruce tied to the bed they had dragged into the other apartment? Had the gore gotten into some cut or orifice, slowly poisoning his blood until nothing of Bruce remained? 

Two quick raps, one more, two hard thumps.

Jason did not sob in relief, it was just a wheeze as Damian kicked him in the stomach to get up. He let the boy go, slumping back on his hands as Damian tore across the room, slamming into Bruce’s dripping figure and holding tight.

Bruce hugged him back briefly. “I’m alright, Damian. Let me go get changed, I don’t want to get you sick.”

Damian reluctantly stepped back and Bruce headed to the bedroom. Steph collected the remaining armor and headed out once again to clean it. Jason shoved himself to his feet and followed, shrugging off Dick’s grabbing hand and ignoring his order to put his full armor on. He tugged on his leather jacket and armored gloves, pulling the one helmet that still fit him over his head. That would be enough, for now.

Steph glanced up at him and resumed attaching the armor to the bit of fence Jason had dragged upstairs. A bit of soldering and adding framing and they had a solid cleaning station. Jason held his pistol loosely in one hand, watching the hallway that led to the stairwell. All the other apartments had been turned into traps; tripwires, minor explosives that wouldn’t compromise the building’s integrity, and disguised holes they had cut to go straight to the basement level. They had needed to reset the traps a few times. Jason usually took the job, along with Tim or Dick. They were the least likely to flinch at the remains. Bruce could do it, and did when necessary, but he was too...respectful. He wanted to straighten limbs and close eyes and give these people some semblance of peace, but there wasn’t time. The living had to come first, and Bruce would never risk their lives — and they had finally managed to impress on him the fact that they wouldn’t survive without him — but it hurt him, and Jason couldn’t stand to see the sad look on his face as he stepped over severed limbs and charred bodies.

Alfred would have been good for it too, but there was an unspoken agreement, including by the man himself, that Alfred was kept back whenever possible. There was also a firmly spoken version that extended to Damian, who was less on board with the idea.

The hose turned off as Steph flipped the fencing to get the other side, and Jason strained his ears for any sound coming from the outside.

“Clear,” Steph said after a long few minutes of inspecting every centimeter of the armor. Jason didn’t help her gather it up, keeping his gaze fixed on the stairwell. Was it just him, or was the ever-present sound of shuffling and moaning getting louder?

“Steph,” he said in a low voice, “we have to move.”

Steph’s jaw tightened and she quickly scooped the last of the armor into a clean burlap sack, joining him at the door and pulling her own pistol. “Visual?” she asked, scanning the dark hallway. She knew Jason’s helmet had better visual capacity than her cowl.

“No, just audio. Hurry up and knock,” he hissed, backing down the hallway and barely letting her finish her code before knocking his own. Five hard thumps, the number he had been assigned when they knew they needed a system. Cass had claimed number 4, holding tight to her claim of being older than Jason, but Jason couldn’t find it in him to be annoyed. It was relieving, to know they could still have their inside jokes even after the world went mad.

They backed into the apartment, guns trained on the hallway, and Jason could hear movement behind him, the unmistakable sound of guns being cocked. “How many?” Bruce demanded, standing just behind Jason’s shoulder.

“Just heard ‘em,” Jason said. “Shut the damn door.”

Dick jumped forward, shutting the door and locking it firmly, and Jason relaxed with a sigh. Finally, they were all back and safe, with clean bills of health — well, as clean a bill as one could get, living off scavenged food and boiled water. Jason might complain about the close quarters — and it was definitely a problem, make no mistake — but it was easier, when he woke up with nightmares of laughter and green and empty faces over mangled bodies, to see everyone at a glance, to hear their quiet breathing, to be able to reach out and touch them, just to make sure they were really there.

Steph started drying the clean armor and Jason jumped to help, needing to do something with his hands. Alfred joined them after a moment, wielding the precious can of coating that improved and protected their armor’s integrity. Damian was sitting on Bruce’s lap, with Cass pressed tight to one side and Tim pressed tight to the other. Dick prowled around the room, body screwed up tight, and Jason reached out a hand and grabbed him, dragging him to the ground much like he had done with Damian. Instead of pulling Dick into his lap, he just handed him a towel and didn’t move away from where Dick had folded to the ground, allowing their sides to press against each other. Dick needed touch to feel grounded, sometimes, but he would never ask his younger siblings to give up their spots for him. Jason wasn’t Bruce — thank _God_ — but he would be damned if he let his brother get lost in his own head when he had it on good authority that he was a furnace and nice to lean up against. There wasn’t time for it, it was too dangerous, that’s all. This was a tactical decision.

“Thanks, Jay,” Dick said quietly.

“You’re driving me crazy with your pacing,” Jason grouched. “Sit still for two damn minutes, will you?”

Dick just leaned a little more into his side and grabbed Tim’s greaves to dry.

No one mentioned the way the door handle twisted and rattled.


End file.
